


Addiction

by Rhianne



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Episode Tag: Murder 101, Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 17:45:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianne/pseuds/Rhianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene for Murder 101. Originally submitted to Sentinel_Thurs for Challenge #78 - Scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Addiction

Growing up around Naomi’s friends, Blair had learned more than he’d ever wanted to know about addiction. He knew what caused it, what sustained it, and just how hard a habit was to break. He’d seen good people utterly destroyed by need, reduced to desperate animals thinking about nothing but where their next fix was coming from and willing to betray their closest friends in the process. 

Which was why, in spite of what some people thought based on his appearance, Blair had never been tempted to try any of the substances he’d had easy access to while growing up and during his time at Rainier. 

Besides, Naomi would have killed him. For all her Bohemian, New Age beliefs, she was a strong believer in the sanctity of the body, and unlike many of her friends would never pollute herself with mind-altering substances. It was a mind-set she’d made sure to pass on to her son. 

If someone had asked him ten years ago whether Blair would one day be battling his own addiction, Blair would have laughed at them. Yet here he was, staring at his reflection in the mirror and wondering if he was ever going to be able to break his drug of choice. 

He hadn’t even seen it coming. Years ago, Jim had thrown him up against the wall of his office and threatened to shake the place down for narcotics, and Blair had never once suspected that the man standing in front of him, hands twisted furiously in his clothes, was more dangerous than any street drug. 

The really pathetic thing was, even after everything that had happened, all the things he’d learned in the years since meeting Jim, Blair knew that if he was offered the chance, he’d go back and do it all again. 

There would be a few things he’d try to change of course, starting with pretty much everything that had happened in the last month. Dying wasn’t exactly on his list of things he wanted to do before he turned thirty. 

He still couldn’t believe it had gone to hell so suddenly. But then, if he was honest with himself, it hadn’t happened all that fast. Not really. Alex had blown all the cracks in their friendship wide open, but Blair wasn’t deluded enough to ignore the fact that the cracks had been there for a long time before she’d blown into their lives. 

Not that any of it really mattered any more. He couldn’t go back and change things no matter how desperately he might wish he could - there was no genie waiting round the corner to magically grant him wishes, and Blair didn’t believe in guardian angels any more. 

So here he was, standing in the bathroom at the loft. He looked older; there were lines around his eyes and dark circles that he didn’t remember seeing before, lines borne of stress and sadness and worry. If he took off his shirt, Blair knew he’d see dark, mottled bruises on his chest to match the cut over his eye, but he was too cold for that. 

It seemed as if he was always cold these days. 

The paramedics had checked him out at the docks, re-suturing the cut over his eye that had re-opened during his fight with Ventriss. They’d stripped him of his wet clothes, taken one look at the bruises and wanted to transport him to Cascade General, but he’d refused. 

He didn’t need treatment. He didn’t need perfect strangers seeing the physical effects of his addiction. Every addict had their own unique symptoms - junkies had track marks; alcoholics got the shakes if they waited too long between drinking sessions. He got bruises. More scars to add to his growing collection. 

This wasn’t the first time he’d been beaten since working with Jim, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. It was, however, the first time he’d been left to deal with the aftermath on his own. 

After the police backup arrived to cart Ventriss and Nadine off to the precinct, the ambulances dispersed and Jim had dropped Blair back at the loft before returning to the station to help with the clean-up. It made a change from the almost claustrophobic hovering the detective usually did when Blair had been hurt in the past, but Blair wasn’t really all that surprised by the change in attitude. Things had been distant between the two of them since they got back from Sierra Verde, and Blair had long since given up any hope of a return to their former camaraderie. 

And yet, in spite of all the things that had gone wrong, Blair simply couldn’t bring himself to give it up. In his head, he knew that it was time to leave - his ‘one week’ at the loft had long since run out. Deep down Blair had known he was overstaying his welcome since that disastrous weekend at Clayton Falls, but when it came down to it, he just couldn’t walk away. 

The very thought of going back to full-time academia made him feel nauseous. No more time spent down at the PD with the guys, no more poker nights with Jim, no more cases to work on - he couldn’t do it. A long time ago he’d told Jim that it would be like jumping off a roller coaster and spending the rest of his life on a merry-go-round, and he’d meant every word. Even without the sentinel thing, being a cop in all but name had shown him a world he’d never dreamed of, a way he could help people and make a difference that had been virtually impossible locked away in his office at Rainier. There had been a time when Blair had satisfied his love of life in teaching and in women, but somewhere in the last years his priorities had changed. Until he’d met Jim, Blair had never realized he was an adrenaline junkie. 

He couldn’t continue to do both jobs, although unless Ventriss’ arrest was enough to convince Chancellor Edwards to give him his job back, that was no longer an issue. But even if his luck finally changed for the better and he was reinstated, his advisors had been pushing for him to finish his dissertation for months now - he couldn’t stall them any longer. 

Blair didn’t even have the excuse that Jim needed someone by his side who understood what it meant to be a sentinel. Jim hadn’t zoned in a long time, was more than capable of controlling his own senses (rogue sentinels notwithstanding), and Jim no longer seemed to want him around. Their friendship was getting more strained by the day, and besides, now that Megan knew what Jim was, she was a much more sensible partner for the Major Crime detective than an ex-grad student with no police training whatsoever. 

Everything had fallen apart, and yet he still couldn’t seem to shake his need, this addiction to Jim’s world and his friendship that had crept up on him unawares. 

Someone had once told Blair that a sudden shock could sometimes be enough to jar a person out of addictive behavior, to force them to take a step back and re-evaluate their life, but even that hadn’t been enough to break Blair out of this addiction. 

After all, you couldn’t get much more of a shock than dying, right? That hellish morning at the fountain and everything that had come both before and after Alex had forced his head under the water had made Blair acutely aware of just how screwed up his life had become. Blair could see proof of that every morning as he and Jim tiptoed around each other, neither one prepared to deal with the white elephant that Alex had left sitting in the living room. And yet he was still here. Nothing had changed. 

As he continued to stare at himself in the mirror, Blair wondered exactly what it was going to take to finally make him try and kick the habit - and whether or not he was strong enough to survive the withdrawal.


End file.
